Ellie was playing solitaire in the front room, a paper dove opening and closing its wings next to her mug, when I came to get her. I must not have done a good job of hiding my emotions because her smile dropped off her face pretty damn fast.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, scrambling to her feet. She slipped the dove into her pocket. The rest of the cards tumbled off her lap and scattered on the floor. I shook my head, still trying to catch my breath, and grabbed her coat off the hooks. She took it from me and slid her arms through the sleeves. “Kai, you’re freaking me out.”
I was freaking myself out, to be honest. I really didn’t want Ellie around the Schöpfers. They had a tendency to see us normal people like we were little experiments, things to be studied and examined and discarded at the snap of their fingers. And it’d only be worse because she time-traveled. But they wanted to see her because they thought they’d figured out why and how the balloon worked for her. And if they figured that out, maybe they’d be able to get her a way home.
“Ashasher and Aurora,” I said at last, opening the door for her and then switching into German. “They want to see you. At the workshop.”
She glanced over her shoulder at me while I locked the door. “You look scared.”
I tried to smile. I had practice faking emotions for Sabina, but for some reason, I couldn’t with Ellie. I said hoarsely, “I’ll be with you the whole time.”
She blinked and then nodded while she brushed her mane of brown waves back over her shoulder. She didn’t look as afraid as I felt, or as I expected her to look. “Okay.”
I didn’t get why I felt her trust was so misplaced. I wanted to earn it, but I didn’t know how. I just knew that I’d never seen Ashasher and Aurora so worked up and animated like they were this morning. I slipped my hand into hers, and we set off for the workshop.
Dropping into the train tunnels brought back a slew of memories from the other day that didn’t help to slow my heart or make it easier to breathe. Every time we bumped into each other in the tunnels, I thought about stopping and kissing her again. All my life, I’d never understood how people could get distracted so easily. I went eighteen years before understanding: distractions were five foot six with a mane of perpetually tangled brown curls and blue eyes that could bring a man to his knees. Everyone has their own definition of distraction, I guess.
As I closed the door to the workshop behind us, Ellie’s eyes nearly popped out of her skull. She hadn’t seen it so busy. Schöpfers were examining a red balloon lit up by stage lights and held delicately in the metal clamps in the middle of a table. I could barely see the equations on the thin skin of the balloon, but I wasn’t here for a balloon. Not today. Ashasher sat in the corner with Aurora, the feathers moving at slow speed while Aurora’s eye makeup seemed to drip down her face a little more than usual today. My sister was noticeably absent.
Eyes followed Ellie, and I expected her to be shy, but she walked behind me, her bottom lip trembling but her feet steady. The girl was way more incredible than she’d ever give herself credit for being. We crossed the workshop to the place under the overhang where Ashasher and Aurora had ceased talking just to watch us walk.
I realized too late that Ellie and I were still holding hands. Ashasher raised his eyebrows, a hidden motion behind the crown of feathers, but I knew him well enough that he gave himself away. Aurora blatantly stared at our hands. It was too late to drop Ellie’s hand now. Not if I ever wanted to kiss this girl again (and yes, I did).
She must have figured out that everyone was staring at us, at her holding my hand, not at her. Her fingers tried to untwist, but I just held her hand tighter. We weren’t giving in to that nonsense. I’d already become mahrime, outcast from my people. Here, in this world, they could not judge me for this.
“Ellie,” Ashasher said in greeting, the feathers picking up speed. “Kai. Thank you for coming.”
“Aurora,” I said, and gestured a bit with our hands. “This is Ellie. You met the other night.”
For the first time in good light, Ellie and Aurora appraised each other. Then, in careful, absurdly careful German, Ellie said, “I forgot to say thank you. For working to find me a balloon that will take me home.”
Aurora shook her hand slowly, tilting her head to the side. “It took me a few days to sort it out, but I think I know why the balloon picked you, Ellie Baum,” she said. “You look like him. It’s even clearer now in the light.”
Aurora turned, dropping Ellie’s hand and crossing to the chalkboard. She tugged Garrick’s photo off the slate and brought it back, handing it to Ellie. Ellie had seen it before, but of course Aurora didn’t know that. Ellie studied the photo, a frown curling up the softness of her face. I studied Garrick’s dark curls, his slim face, his long, delicate fingers always with a pen between them. At first, I didn’t see it, but then…Their eyes were the same shape. They had the same crooked smile. The same ears. Ellie turned the photo over and read the name off the back of it.
“Garrick Aaron Hirsch,” Ellie said aloud slowly, and then her eyes widened. She jerked and looked up at me. “Hirsch. He has the same last name as my grandfather. And his middle name…That was my grandfather’s father who died at Łódź.”
“We pulled Garrick’s file,” Ashasher said, looking around. “Where’d it go? Christian, find Garrick Hirsch’s file.”
“I heard you both met our Zerberus friend,” Aurora said in the lull as some young Schöpfer behind us scrambled to do Ashasher’s bidding.
“He’s a real piece of work,” I said, trying to take a deep breath. Ellie said nothing, just stared at the photo. “Did you talk to him?”
Ashasher’s smile thinned his mouth. “The Zerberus will not speak to us. By coming to you, they have made it clear whom they are investigating in the case of Ellie and Garrick’s balloon. And now there’s a second balloon. Even we cannot ignore the facts. It is unlikely, Ellie, that your balloon was accidental.”
I instinctively tightened my hand around Ellie’s as she said, “I figured.”
Ellie’s shoulder bumped into mine, but my mind was still on a delay. “But why? What’s someone trying to accomplish?”
“I think it’s fair to say that their goal isn’t to kill people in the future one balloon at a time. Beyond that, I cannot say at this time. We don’t know enough,” Ashasher confirmed, gesturing with a limp hand to himself and then Aurora. “The Zerberus are holding us responsible for the magic that caused the balloon to cut the fabric of time. Even if the magic to do that is experimental at best and by far illegal. It was banned before the wall was even erected.”
He shook his head while Aurora’s eyes shifted away from us, her mouth tight. I couldn’t imagine that it was a particularly pleasant experience to be investigated by the Zerberus. Couldn’t be much more pleasant than knowing the Stasi were investigating you. That thought made me shiver. Aurora wasn’t nearly as off-the-handle high as a kite as she had been the other night though, if she appeared this uncomfortable. Maybe she understood how serious it was. No more flippant comments from her today.
“If magic can go through time,” Ellie asked, her voice cautious enough that I turned back toward her and the way she frowned her worry, “then why is it illegal? Why not use magic to do good?”
Aurora cleared her throat. “The illicit nature of time travel through magical means comes from the complications arising in the brittle nature of history.”
Alright. So maybe she was high. Sometimes I wanted whatever they smoked here on the weekends. Other times, like now and the other night, I didn’t think it sounded so awesome.
Ellie stared at her and then, with a single raised eyebrow, turned to me. I said, in English, “She said that time travel is illegal because history is so easily altered.”
“She couldn’t have just said that?” Ellie asked. Fair enough question. I shrugged, trying to hide my smile. Aurora and Ashasher were my employers, and Sabina’s safety relied on their generosity. I could tell her more later, but not then.
“Time is like fabric. You can fold it and bend it and unravel it and twist it however you wish. The consequences are always extremely dangerous and frequently, as you’ve seen, fatal,” Ashasher said. He probably thought that his explanation would make more sense to Ellie. I grew up watching Sabina discover that the things she wrote down on paper turned into magic. I was used to hearing complicated and usually nonsensical descriptions to explain illogical events.
“So was Garrick trying to go to the future and only the balloon made it?” Ellie asked as a Schöpfer finally arrived with Garrick’s file. I reached for it, but Ashasher interfered, taking it between his long, delicate fingers.
We all fell silent as Ashasher flipped slowly through page after page, the feathers rising and falling around his head like hurricane tides. I had seen storm clouds swirl like this. Inevitably, he was going to look up and report impending doom: that Garrick was actually Ellie or some sort of shit like that, because I honestly wouldn’t have been that shocked at this point.
“Here,” Ashasher asked, pushing the file into Aurora’s hands and tapping at something on the page. He gestured to Aurora with a small wave. “It should be your right to say this.”
“Benno Hirsch,” said Aurora quietly.
“My grandfather.” Ellie lifted her chin.
“When we interviewed him about his family history, Garrick said his father’s brother, Benno, died in the Holocaust at Chełmno, along with his mother. Garrick’s grandfather and aunt, Aaron and Ruth, died at the Łódź ghetto.” Aurora closed the file. “But we know Benno survived.”
Ellie stared at Aurora, her mouth dropping open. I held my breath, glancing at Ashasher, who met my eyes and shook his head just a tad. He didn’t know what was going on either. Then Ellie whispered, “You.”
Aurora tipped her head a little to the side. “Yes.”
“What?” I glanced at Aurora and then back at Ellie’s washed-out face. “Ellie?”
“You saved my grandfather,” Ellie said, her eyes never leaving Aurora’s face. “You saved Benno Hirsch from Chełmno.”
We all knew that Aurora had been the first person to write a balloon used in the field, and we’d known it was in her native home of Poland. But I never thought that the world would spin like this, bringing a girl from the future to the past, that time would be a twisted, knotted bastard like this. Now I could only hope that finding this knot could help me keep my promise to Ellie to get her home.
“I did,” Aurora agreed, her voice soft. She sank into a chair and said, “I never thought I’d meet his granddaughter. I didn’t see that line in Garrick’s file when we first interviewed him. But it makes sense. We tie the magic to the Passenger’s blood. You grabbed the balloon because of Benno, and because of Benno, you, and Garrick sharing genetic material, the balloon recognized you. That is why you survived when the other time-traveler did not. And maybe, with this information, Ellie, we can get you a balloon home.”
Ellie reached out, and Aurora took her hand, two pale and shivering people reaching across space and time. Aurora’s eyes glittered with tears, but Ellie was the one who said softly, “Thank you.”